30 Hudson Yards

30 Hudson Yards is a supertall skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan’s West Side, New York City. It is positioned near Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, and NY Penn Station. As of November 2022, the building is the sixth-tallest in New York City and the eighth-tallest in the United States. It’s a key structure in the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, which aims to revitalize the West Side Yard of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The skyscraper offers a unique feature: a triangular observation deck known as The Edge. Located on the 100th floor, The Edge includes a bar and event space on the adjacent 101st floor. The deck, at a height of 1,100 feet, is the world’s second-highest outdoor observation platform with transparent flooring, trailing only the Cabo Girão cliff skywalk in Madeira, Portugal.
30 Hudson Yards was previously the headquarters of WarnerMedia. Following a 2022 merger with Discovery, Inc., the new entity, Warner Bros. Discovery, remains a tenant. The building also serves as the headquarters for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., an American global investment company.
History
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on December 4, 2012. Early construction work focused on building a platform to cover much of the Eastern Rail Yard, for much of Phase 1 to sit upon and to allow the Gateway Rail Tunnel project to pass underground with a clear path. The platform is rested on caissons that are drilled underground into the solid bedrock known as Manhattan schist. On December 12, 2013, it was announced that Tutor Perini Building Corp. was awarded a US$510 million contract to build the platform.
In 2013, Time Warner (later WarnerMedia, and now Warner Bros. Discovery) announced its intention to move most of its offices to 30 Hudson Yards, vacating its current headquarters at the Time Warner Center, also owned by Related, at Columbus Circle. The company would occupy half the building, below the 38th floor.
In mid-2015, Related received a $690 million loan from Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and CIBC which allowed construction to start. By January 2016, the structure's first few aboveground floors were already complete. Construction of the observation deck at the top of the tower began in April 2018. The observation deck was nearly complete by mid-2018.
In January 2019, WarnerMedia hired Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies of Cushman & Wakefield to find a buyer that would sell their office condominium and allow the company to lease it back—known as a sale-leaseback. WarnerMedia's office condo included more than 1.4 million square feet on floors 16 through 51 and represented approximately 60 percent of the 90-story tower with 2.6 million square feet.
The building opened on March 15, 2019. One month later, WarnerMedia executed a leaseback and sold their space to Related and Allianz for $2.2 billion after signing a 15-year lease for . The sale closed in June 2019. The partners financed the purchase with a 10-year, $1.43 billion commercial mortgage-backed security interest-only loan from Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs. In June, KKR took out a $490 million mortgage from Deutsche Bank on their office condominium space.
Tenants
Lobby: Warner Bros. Discovery, Wells Fargo, The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards (retail), Bluestone Lane coffee
Floors 1–15: Wells Fargo Securities
Floors 16–51: Warner Bros. Discovery
Floor 25: (mechanical floor)
Floor 35: (sky lobby)
Floor 52: (mechanical floor)
Floors 60–65: Wells Fargo Securities
Floors 66–71: Facebook
Floors 72–73: The Related Companies
Floors 74–83: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
Floor 79: (mechanical floor)
Floors 80-99 do not exist.
Floors 100–101: (observation deck)
Floor 101: (event space)
Floors 102–103 (mechanical floors)
Studios
17N: Early Start
19X: Multi purposed studio
19Y: CNN This Morning, CNN Primetime, Quest Means Business
19Z: Erin Burnett OutFront, Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNN News Central, The Source
21L: Anderson Cooper 360°
Architecture and design
Kohn Pedersen Fox was chosen for the design of the building, while Thornton Tomasetti was lead structural engineer and Jaros, Baum & Bolles provided MEP engineering services. Originally planned to be tall, the building was later downsized to tall, making it still the development's tallest building. WarnerMedia's space features amenities including a cafeteria, a fitness center, a two-level auditorium and cinema and an outdoor deck. The protruding outdoor deck has resulted in reviewers likening the building's shape to a duck.
The building's lobby contains artwork by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa consisting of 11 stainless steel spheres hanging from the ceiling, meant to represent global unity and cultural diversity.
Edge
The building features an outdoor observation deck known as "Edge", located on the 100th and 101st floors. Edge contains a cantilevered outdoor terrace jutting outward south of the building on the 100th floor, providing panoramic views of Manhattan and the Hudson River. It is the second highest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere after the SkyPod at the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, The tallest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere, and the second highest observation deck in New York City, after One World Observatory. Visitors can lean into the high clear glass barricade slanted 6.6 degrees outward to safely check out the street and rooftops below. Edge also features a glass triangle in the floor which looks down to the street below. There is also a grand outdoor staircase on the east side of the deck.
Edge opened to visitors on March 11, 2020, and temporarily closed two days later due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Edge reopened on September 2, 2020.
City Climb at Edge
In October 2021, it was announced that 30 Hudson Yards would host another attraction dubbed “City Climb at Edge” which allows visitors to ascend an outdoor staircase located at the top of the tower's crown. It was opened to the public on November 9, 2021, and is the highest open-air building ascent in the world.
Gallery
See also
List of tallest buildings in New York City
Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project
List of tallest freestanding structures in the world
List of tallest freestanding steel structures
List of tallest buildings
References
External links
New York City project website
Related Companies project website
Animation: building the platform while trains run through Brookfield properties, via Gothamist.com
Hudson Yards news and developments
YouTube videos containing a photographic compilation of its construction
Chelsea, Manhattan
Hudson Yards, Manhattan
2019 establishments in New York City
2010s in Manhattan
Kohn Pedersen Fox buildings
Oxford Properties
Skyscraper office buildings in Manhattan
Office buildings completed in 2019
Mass media company headquarters in the United States
Warner Bros. Discovery
Wells Fargo buildings